A sudden attack on a mental hospital in the middle of a city sends one unsuspecting police officer down a horrific rabbit hole of death and torture. He must fight his way back to reality and ensure that the source of this strange new world doesn't make it into the real one.
1. Gameplay
The Evil Within is a solid game with smooth mechanics but a plot so convoluted that I would have trouble recommending this game to anyone. This isn’t the kind of plot where characters have complex thoughts and emotions that lead to an intricate and detailed story, one where confusion might be warranted simply because it tried to do too much. Instead, this is a plot where I can’t tell what is supposed to be real, where character motivations are so absurdly shallow that they make absolutely no sense, and where the ultimate “conspiracy theory” ends up being true (probably). It badly damages what would otherwise be an enjoyable game.
You play a detective called to a crime scene at a local mental hospital. Upon arriving you discover a bloodbath. A mysterious, teleporting enemy captures you and you wake up in the middle of a nightmare. You spend the rest of the game trying to escape the nightmare, constantly chased by increasingly twisted enemies.
The gameplay itself is very solid. The controls feel right, the weapons are powerful against the right enemy types, and the crossbow is one of the most interesting and unique weapon ideas I have seen in a shooter. The enemy types are unique and required me to consider which weapons to use against them. Sometimes, shooting an enemy in the head doesn’t work the first time (especially if the enemy has two heads).
But the plot was horrendous. There were so many missed opportunities to clarify what happened. But the most egregious issue I had is that I could not tell what was real and what was fake. In these types of psychological horror games, the player needs to have a clear understanding of “this stuff is real”, “this stuff is not”, and then the player spends the rest of the time trying to categorize everything in the middle. That’s where the fun comes in. This game had none of those benchmarks. It’s extremely difficult to feel motivated when I can’t tell if the environment I have been presented with is just a dream.
If this game had included a coherent story, especially the one that seems to be alluded to in the backstory, this could have been one of my favorite games of all time. The story I wanted has clear character arcs, plot development, and a detailed, understandable explanation for the situation and why the main character features so prominently in the events of the game. The story included in this game has none of those elements. I would recommend playing (or replaying) Resident Evil 4 before I recommended this game.
It took me around 16 hours to complete the campaign. Considering there are no other game modes and no choices to make within the campaign, this doesn’t seem as long as I was expecting. Even completing the game a second time with a NewGame+ option (which the game does include) would probably only give me another 8 to 12 hours, depending on how much more difficult the game became on a higher difficulty level. I’m not very enthusiastic to play the main campaign a second time, although the DLCs did seem intriguing.
The number of one-hit kill elements, especially the bosses, quickly got on my nerves. I don’t mind a difficult boss battle, such as the one against Boxhead in the middle and end of the game, but I need to be able to learn from my failures and recover to move on. When enemies and objects within the environment kill me instantly, I only learn to avoid those enemies and objects, since fighting them seems fruitless. When I am forced to fight these bosses, I just end up frustrated.
There were a number of times when the design of the game led to a breakdown in communication. For example, the first few times I faced off against Boxhead, I could kill him with one or two crossbow bolts, and then he’d respawn infinitely. At the end of the game I fought two Boxheads simultaneously. After pelting both with a few crossbow bolts and causing no noticeable damage, I assumed that they were invincible and that I had to kill them via some sort of special level-based trap. After an extra half hour of running and dying, I discovered that I just had to keep shooting them until they died permanently. This made an already uninteresting boss battle even more boring.
Overall the gameplay was smooth and understandable. The few problems I had with the mechanics were nothing compared to my problems with the story.
The level of violence in this game is, at times, absurd. While combat-related violence is fairly predictable, the environmental and situational violence in this game is over the top. There are a number of times when the player must literally wade through chest-high rivers of blood and chunks in order to progress.
Many of the enemy types will have faces and bodies that have been split apart by their “disease” (or whatever is afflicting them). The player can see all of this in fairly graphic detail.
Stealth attacks are, relatively speaking, the mildest form of violence in the game. When successfully accomplished, the player drives a knife through the top of the enemy’s skull, killing the enemy instantly. There is some blood, but no gore with this maneuver.
Hits from most of the ranged weapons will result in some blood and, commonly, gore. The amount of gore depends on where the player hits the enemy. Headshots are the easiest place to cause gory violence. If the player gets a critical headshot on an enemy, its head will explode into a shower of blood and bits.
Even if the player doesn’t get a critical hit, headshots can sometimes result in a portion of the head being blown away by the shot. When this happens, the enemy continues to attack the player.
The player can use elemental damage to hurt and kill enemies as well. Most of it is fairly understandable (ice damage freezes enemies, electricity shocks enemies, fire ignites them, etc.). Next to the stealth kills, these were the least violent ways to kill enemies.
Beheadings and dismemberments via chainsaws and other things in the environment can be seen on more rare occasions. The main character can even be dismembered by chainsaw-wielding enemies.
If that’s not enough, please don’t forget to read the torture included in the “Miscellaneous” section below. Seriously.
One of the boss enemies is, for the most part, a naked woman. Her bits are covered up by shadows and fleshy growth, but there’s no mistaking her nudity.
There were only two substances of any significance in this game. The first is the green “brain juice” that the player uses as currency to buy upgrades. The player may inject this brain juice back into himself in order to actually get the upgrades, but this process was never detailed enough to reveal any conclusive evidence.
Healing syringes also made an appearance in the game. These are filled with both a blue and a green liquid. The player injects these into his arm for a short boost of health.
“Medkits” are also present in the game. These are essentially exactly the same as the syringes, except the player injects these into his chest for full health. The player is drugged for a short while afterward and has a difficult time moving and aiming. The effects go away after a few seconds.
Gambling is not a factor in this game.
3. Other Factors
There are no modding tools available for this game.
There is at least one church with an accompanying churchyard in the game, but the game doesn’t overtly talk about religion. There is no God overseeing this space. The closest thing is Ruvik, since he creates, controls, and manipulates the world and the people within it. The player will have to kill a few zombie nuns though.
Anti-law is not a factor in this game.
There are no multiplayer game modes for this game.
Extreme sports are not a factor in this game.
I am going to call what happens in this game magical. As it is extremely difficult to differentiate between what happens in the real world and what happens in the brain worlds, I have a tough time pointing to what is specifically magical with any sort of certainty. However, the main character perceives all of what he sees as real, so therefore I will call it magical.
The main antagonist has some fairly insane abilities. He can teleport, change the environment, cause people to turn into zombies, and make monsters. He uses these powers fairly extensively, and there are a few sections where he will simply turn up randomly to hunt down the player.
Torture Torture plays a huge role in this game’s design, tone, and setting. Many of the environments include signs that people were mutilated and tortured in horrific ways. The player does not see this torture going on, since there are very few actual humans left in the world, but the aftermath is especially prominent in the early chapters.
There is one section that absolutely takes the cake with torture, though. In a haunted mansion-type area the player has to unlock a giant vault door. In order to do so, he needs to feed a blood-like fluid through the locks. The blood is blocked until he inserts a metal pin into three different heads. The heads are sitting on a wooden base board, with brains exposed. The kicker is that all three heads are being kept alive by machines. You have to put the pin into the correct part of a living person’s brain.
I hate needles, so I’m naturally biased against this content as it is. That being said, this is seriously messed up.
Human Disfigurement
Almost all of the enemies are designed to be severely disfigured humans. The extent of the disfigurement usually depends on how difficult the enemy is to kill. The most basic enemies look mostly like people, but with some zombie-like changes.
The most difficult enemies are horribly disfigured. They often include a mix of parts from different people. Two heads, four legs, that sort of thing.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Like what we do? Want to see more? Donate to the site using the button below!
Not sure what a term means? Read the definitions!
Not sure what a review section is about? Find out more information!
|